Replaced
by Krackaroo21
Summary: After so long, Blues found himself facing an upgrade, his creator, and the ones who replaced him.


**Here is an idea I got. It's rather angsty, so watch out. (Also, I haven't been posting much because there's a lot of things going on, plus I'm working a lengthy piece right now. Thanks for being patient!)**

 **Enjoy!**

 **\--E--**

The room had a metal table to the left and a child's bed to the right. Computer screens, blueprints, and a box of bolts sat to the left. Mugs, colored-pencil drawings, and a kitchen oven sat to the right. It was all familiar. Test tubes to the left and a bicycle to the right. It was a blend of two worlds: a robot's beginnings and a home. A cool blue from the left. Warmth from the right. He remembered this.

Balanced between the opposites, Blues laid on a repair table. A slanted one where metal cuffs held him up. His red and gray bodysuit was gone, his legs too. Circuits exposed. His systems winked from under his steel framing and cords snaked out of him and his missing legs, draping themselves off the table like vines off an ancient relic. His mechanical makeup bled into the blue and warm colors around him.

He focused his eyes. Bolts and wires peeled off his body and floated. They floated away and organized themselves on the metal table to the left, collecting in small piles next to his legs, his steel plating, his shades, and his scarf. A magic wizard took him apart, it seemed. But he knew who this was. Standing over him was a man with kind, wrinkled eyes. A white beard.

"Doctor Light?"

Humming the same way he always did when he worked on his passions, the man used a wrench on Blues' left arm. It came off in seconds. "I just need to take this off... get that fine-tuned upgrade... should take a few minutes."

His chest plate open as the Doctor dug a screwdriver in his stabilizer system. Systems whined, wires flew to the table, and the man continued working and humming. Blues felt the man's fingerprints pull out outdated circuits.

"Doctor, you're... you're upgrading me?"

"Need to take a few wires here and there to clean this up... should be quick, I'm sure."

More body pieces floated away. The tabletop crowded.

"Doctor, what am I doing here? I thought I wasn't..." He wanted to say not welcomed, but he knew that was a lie. He knew his father's heart. "Why are you upgrading me anyway?"

The man sang under his breath, smiling down as he rearranged a few cords in Blues' subprocessor. In seconds, the cords were gone. More left him and he felt weightless, lighter than the birthday balloon in the corner, and he did not fight it. Although he did not want Doctor Light around, let alone upgrade him, after so long, he lied back. He kept his back flat and arm relaxed as a ceiling fan whirled overhead.

Minutes later, as his metal plates loosened, the kitchen oven beeped. It wailed and steamed a bakery's perfume. Cowboy Cookies. With pecans, bits of chocolate, and coconut, they were the same recipe he use to make, the same recipe he used to make in the same wailing oven while the Doctor religiously worked on his creations. On the wall, the apron was still on its hook, he noted. It still had brown sugar stains. But now, with the oven calming, cookie steam sailed to the left of the room where it mixed with crude fumes from the element cabinet. Arsenic and oats mashed together.

This, the lab and the house, was home how he left it.

The computer fans inside him silence themselves once the man pulled out another cord. He opened his mouth. "Doctor, really though... What's going on? Did something happen?"

"That should do it." Light dropped the screwdriver and turned around to the operating table, depositing an armload of wires on the table, dropping them next to the shades and scarf. "Now where did I put it at?"

"Seriously," Blues said, cocking his head up. "What's wrong...?"

The shades and scarf, now that he looked around the Doctor, were shattered or shredded. They laid in minced piles.

"Doctor?"

"... This should take a second," the man said, turning around with gloves and a welding mask. "Now guess what gift I have for you today."

As the Doctor picked up a blowtorch, something like a heart monitor appeared next to Blues and connected to his arm. It beeped, spiking up and down in a somber rhythm. He tested it; the monitor would not let go.

"Doctor."

"My sweet little boy," the Doctor spoke softly, spoke glowing words as he slid the mask down, "my sweet little girl... There's something special I've been meaning to give you two."

In the back of his head, voices: "What's that, dad?"

"Something I think you both deserve."

The moment the torch drew a dagger-sharp flame, Blues' head pulsed with walking whispers: "A gift? What kind?"

"My children, it's something I have wished to give you the day you came into my life." Doctor Light said and grabbed Blues' shoulder. "It's something I can finally give you now." He pressed the flame into his chest.

Blues flinched as the voices stood over him: "A special gift? What could that be?"

The torch melted his metal; a gleaming liquid dripped off the table and collected into hot puddles. Sparks recoiled. The torch ate a hole in his chest and tattooed black spots on his systems.

He screamed. "Doctor! Doctor! Why are you-?!"

The voices: "How exciting! I love surprises!"

Everything burned as Blues struggled and flailed with his remaining arm, groping the side of the table as the torch softened his chest, as it dove deeper inside like a parasite crawled inside of him. To the side, through the hissing torch, the giddy voices, and his outcries, the heart monitor blared.

Voices: "Is it another upgrade for Rush?"

"No," the Doctor hummed. "It's something like an upgrade for you and your sister, my dear boy. I think it's important for you both to have this."

The heart monitor whined, spiking up and down; the line was a green mountain and a valley that moved at a hundred miles per hour across the screen. But Blues could not bear it. The torch ruined his circuits and he clawed the table's side, searching for a release button, for a lever, for anything to help him. For anything. He cried for mercy as the Doctor smiled with his kind, wrinkled eyes.

"Please..." He screamed as loud as the monitor. "Why are you doing this? Please... please let me go. Let me go. Please, I thought everything... I thought everything was behind us... "

Now, with the monitor squealing and shaking like a skyscraper in an earthquake, there was a black hole in his chest, one where split wires swam through puddles. It, Blues realized, was a gateway to his powercore. He thrashed.

The Doctor took off the mask. "Here we are."

He sputtered words. "Doctor, please, please, please-."

The voices in his head became impatient: "Oh, what is it? What is it? Tell us, dad!"

"It, my children, is a present from me to you."

Cheers and a cry as the man reached inside his chest, gloves groping through sparking wires. Blues shrieked as the Doctor twisted his powercore and tore his life away. Soft metals snapped. Systems failed. Tears. The powercore left him as the heart monitor exploded into a solid buzz. It was the loudest thing in the world.

"And here it is." The Doctor said as the torch disappeared. He held the powercore in his hands; the powercore, the mechanical heart, glowed and throbbed with nuclear energy, laying still in the man's hand. Satisfied, he turned away from the broken robot to face two figures.

"Children, I've waited years to give you this gift."

Blues shook, tears streaming, metal dripping, and looked up through wet bangs to see a blue shirt and a red dress. He saw no faces, only the shape of his siblings' smiles, only the shape of their never-ending happiness. They, all three of them, were joyful.

"Thank you so much, dad!"

"We love you!"

"Of course, dear children. I love you with all my heart."

The family turned to leave. Their colors faded into the wall while the lab and the home turned gray. Cool blue and warmth drained.

"No! Please! Please! I need... I need... I need that..." Blues sobbed. "I need my heart... That's all I... Doctor, please... That's all I have..."

The metal cuffs would not let him go. They kept him down, keeping him from dragging his broken body after his powercore, after his heart. But there was nothing he could do. He cried.

"Please, please... Doctor, please, I'm sorry that I couldn't be... that I couldn't be what I was built for, but please... please give it back. I still want to live..." He fell down a hundred stories. "It's all I have left."

 **\--E--**

He woke up from under a tree. He held his head until the dawn colored the earth.

 **\--E--**

 **Have a golly good day!**

 **(PS sorry Blues)**

 **(PPS sorry for making you feel depressed! But reviews help me out. Also, it makes my day to know you guys enjoy these works. Lemme know if you do like them and if you want any special requests!)**


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